Imagination, Predictable Patterns, and Feedback

In an environment of predictable patterns and feedback, my imagination can accurately anticipate every experience. Life could easily be taken for granted in such a state of certitude. No need for critical analysis or conscientious interpretation to maintain a sense of knowing – just a vivid imagination. So, in that environment, I adjust feedback to make it acceptable, and hold it in place with confirmation bias.

I might perceive change of any kind as a threat to my peace. The need to put things back the way they were is imperative. And of course, there is always my imagination to fall back on. After all, my perfect world may be based on my ability to boost my imagination at will to smooth out the inconsistencies.

To mitigate my fear of the unknown, I initiate a predictive equation based on certitude.

Predictable => Imagination + Bias

Uncertainty evokes fear upon a dependent mind by hindering confidence. In my biased reality, imagination is a must in keeping my perspective accurate. When information in the form of feedback threatens my certitude, I have to create interpretations that appease my need for certitude and override feedback accuracy.

In my First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble, I use bias to interpret feedback to validate my predictions. My need to be right means I will seek to disprove that I am wrong. I can at least be accurate about my defense of my rightness.

Through interpretation, I can manipulate accuracy within the pattern-feedback equation. By knowing ahead of an experience what my responses will be, I can feel safer. Yet, I limit the understanding held in that experience by being certain of the cause and effect without questioning it.

Thus, maybe prediction IS projection.

Patterns of Prediction or How I Avoid Humiliation and Awakening

Patterns – it’s the stuff of life. I don’t perceive reality – I literally create it with assumptions – based on my perception of patterns. I assume a pattern as soon as I “guess” that one exists. After that, I tend to “fill in the blanks” rather than test my hypothesis (my “guess”).

To illustrate my point, consider the following:

1, 2, 3…

Can you predict the next number? Of course you can. You assume it is 4. That’s because you perceive a familiar pattern. But, what if it is not 4. What if it is 5 instead? Is the pattern broken? Maybe – unless you can perceive a new pattern, you will not be able to predict the next or the next number.

Read more Patterns of Prediction or How I Avoid Humiliation and Awakening

Patterns of Fate that Enslave Thought

I can’t help it – I see patterns everywhere! OK, I create patterns everywhere.

Whether the patterns I think are real or simply what I wish to be real, they are useful as a means of justifying my need to keep my experiences consistent with my linear story and my  understanding of how things work.

Patterns have value in that they present a kind of predictability to everything. And predictability makes life feel safer. No thing within my awareness is without my assigned patterns and values. I create both physical and psychological patterns and my justified values of them to satisfy my need for a justifiable reality.

Patterns, to me, are that which I perceive as replicated that validate my story, e.g. –

  • (physical) shapes, colors, sizes, textures, sounds, tastes, and etc.
  • (psychological) nasty, weird, silly, shameful, rude, tweeker, and etc.

Read more Patterns of Fate that Enslave Thought